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Permaculture (permanent agriculture) is the conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive ecosystems which have the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems. It is the harmonious integration of landscape and people providing their food, energy, shelter, and other material and non-material needs in a sustainable way. Without permanent agriculture there is no possibility of a stable social order.
Permaculture design is a system of assembling conceptual, material, and strategic components in a pattern which functions to benefit life in all its forms.
Permaculture in Landscape and Society
Permaculture in Landscape and Society
As the basis of permaculture is beneficial design, it can be added to all other ethical training and skills, and has the potential of taking a place in all human endeavors. In the broad landscape, however, permaculture concentrates on already-settled areas and agricultural lands. Almost all of these need drastic rehabilitation and re-thinking. One certain result of using our skills to integrate food supply and settlement, to catch water from our roof areas, and to place nearby a zone of fuel forest which receives wastes and supplies energy, will be to free most of the area of the globe for the rehabilitation of natural systems. These need never be looked upon as “of use to people”, except in the very broad sense of global health.
The real difference between a cultivated (designed) ecosystem, and a natural system is that the great majority of species (and biomass) in the cultivated ecology is intended for the use of humans or their livestock. We are only a small part of the total primeval or natural species assembly, and only a small part of its yields are directly available to us. But in our own gardens, almost every plant is selected to provide or support some direct yield for people. Household design relates principally to the needs of people; it is thus human-centered (anthropocentric).
The philosophy behind permaculture is one of working with, rather than against, nature; of protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless action; of looking at systems in all their functions, rather than asking only one yield of them; and allowing systems to demonstrate their own evolutions.
This is a valid aim for settlement design, but we also need a nature-centered ethic for wilderness conservation. We cannot, however, do much for nature if we do not govern our greed, and if we do not supply our needs from our existing settlements. If we can achieve this aim, we can withdraw from much of the agricultural landscape, and allow natural systems to flourish.
— by Julie Pagliaro
Illustration by Cecilia Macaulay
Recycling of nutrients and energy in nature is a function of many species. In our gardens, it is our own responsibility to return wastes (via compost or mulch) to the soil and plants. We actively create soil in our gardens, whereas in nature many other species carry out that function. Around our homes we can catch water for garden use, but we rely on natural forested landscapes to provide the condenser leaves and clouds to keep rivers running with clean water, to maintain the global atmosphere, and to lock up our gaseous pollutants. Thus, even anthropocentric people would be well-advised to pay close attention to, and to assist in, conservation of existing forests and to assist in, the conservation of all existing species and allow them a place to live.
We have abused the land and laid waste to systems we never need have disturbed had we attended to our home gardens and settlements. If we need to state a set of ethics on natural systems, then let it be thus:
Implacable and uncompromising opposition to further disturbance of any remaining natural forests, where most species are still in balance;
Vigorous rehabilitation of degraded and damaged natural systems to stable states;
Establishment of plant systems for our own use on the least amount of land we can use for our existence; and
Establishment of plant and animal refuges for rare or threatened species.
Permaculture as a design system deals primarily with the third statement above, but all people who act responsibly in fact subscribe to the first and second statements. We believe should use all the species we need or can find to use in our own settlement designs, providing they are not locally rampant and invasive.
We knew we wanted to raise fruits and vegetables and medicinal herbs without chemicals so organic farming interested us. We also wanted to build a straw bale house and raise our own livestock for meat, eggs and dairy. We started researching different methods and one day an article in Mother Earth News magazine changed everything. The name of the article was, “Plant an Edible Forest Garden” by Harvey Ursery. The article started out by asking questions. “Are you feeling adventurous?” Sure! “Do you want to delve deeper into gardening?” Why, yes. Even better, "are you thinking of planting an orchard?” Wow, this guy must be psychic… how did he know? It went on, "If so, consider planting a forest garden….”
It has been nearly three years since my husband Kim and I decided we wanted to find a piece of land somewhere where we could raise most of our own food and lead a healthier, more sustainable lifestyle. By March of 2007, we were the proud new owners of a beautiful farm just under 44 acres in North Central Idaho.
Now what?
The idea of working with nature and imitating natural systems clicked with us. It made perfect sense. I thought we had better find out more about this Permaculture stuff! Within a short period of time, I knew quite a bit about the history of Permaculture and the credentials of Bill Mollison and Geoff Lawton. I signed up for a Permaculture webinar offered by Midwest Permaculture in the States and shared what I had learned with my husband. The next logical step was to take a Permaculture Design Course, but which one and where? And then… I found it… the Tagari website! Bill Mollison was still teaching Permaculture and there was a PDC scheduled in three months in Melbourne, Australia! I told Kim, “Did you know Bill Mollison and Geoff Lawton are teaching a PDC in Australia in January? It sure would be fantastic to learn from one of the most experienced teachers ever, not to mention the man that started it all, wouldn’t it?” I think he muttered back, “Yeah, sure…we’ve always wanted to go to Australia”. At this point it was more of a joke then a plan but I couldn’t resist checking the airfare prices. We had saved some money to dig a well on the farm, but perhaps this was more important. To make a long story short, three months later, my husband and I, and our daughter, Kelly, found ourselves on a plane to Melbourne.
It is no exaggeration that a Permaculture design certificate course is a life changing experience. While not all Permaculture students go on to teach, we were sure before the end of our PDC, that establishing a demonstration farm and educational center on our farm in Idaho was what we wanted to do with the rest of our lives. As an added bonus, our then eleven-year-old daughter Kelly, who just came along for the ride, ended up with a Permaculture Design certification as well.
Immediately after returning to Las Vegas from Melbourne, the three of us planted a Permaculture garden using raised beds We also set up a website (www.kamiahpermaculture.com) and organized an Introduction to Permaculture class the following month. We went on to host three different Permaculture Film and Discussion events at the Las Vegas Springs Preserve featuring Bill Mollison’s The Global Gardener and Geoff Lawton’s water harvesting and food forest videos. Last August, we were lucky to have Geoff and Nadia Lawton visit our farm to consult on our design and we held a small meeting in the town of Kamiah to introduce some like-minded members of the local community to the Lawtons.
Kim Pagliaro and Geoff Lawton
Discussing Our Design
Setting up rainwater harvesting system
Returning to our regular jobs seemed somewhat strange. Our outlook on life had changed. I felt as if there was something more important I should be doing. We knew we would eventually make the move to Idaho full time but the idea of leaving the security of a good paying occupation was very terrifying. We continued to prepare for our eventual relocation. We stopped leasing our land to a cattle farmer, who has obviously never heard of rotational grazing, and attempted digging our first swale. Last fall, we set up our rainwater harvesting system by installing gutters on our barn roof (our only existing structure which happily sits on the highest point on our farm).
The global economic situation put us at a crossroads. It was time to choose…stay in our current situation of a mainstream family always trying to make ends meet and accumulate more stuff but never feeling fulfilled and put our demonstration farm plans on hold, or take the leap and have faith that by doing something meaningful, things would fall into place and everything would work out. Why couldn’t we have thought of this when we were in our twenties? I have to say this has been the biggest challenge our family has ever faced… to make that decision to move forward. We have decided to take the leap. To say we are going to experience a lifestyle change is an understatement. We purchased a yurt to live in until we can build a straw bale house and started a small sheet mulch garden. We do not have a well or municipal source of water, only rainwater. Some people think we are a little crazy.
Now we are offering our first Permaculture classes at our farm this summer with the help of experienced Permaculture designers/teachers. In August, we are offering a Permaculture Design Certificate course with Jesse Lemieux of Pacific Permaculture, British Columbia, Canada on August 23rd – September 4th, followed by Water For Every Farm, a three-day earthworks course, Sept. 5-7th, 2009, taught by Warren Brush of Quail Springs Permaculture located at Quail Springs in California.
We are as excited about this change for our family as we are scared but we are also optimistic. Permaculture has given us hope for the future, our future…everyone’s future. The world needs Permaculture now. To share it with others has never felt so right.
Storm water and grey water preservation and distribution
Storm water and grey water preservation and distribution
Biological Cleaning, Compost, Conservation, Soil Conservation, Storm Water, Swales, Waste Water, Water Contaminaton, Water Harvesting — by Campbell Wilson
by Cam Wilson, Forest Edge Permaculture
Greywater mulch-pits provide an excellent solution when re-using greywater on your garden - they are cheap to construct, they improve the quality of water entering your soil and after some time provide you with valuable compost. They’re very easy to construct too. You basically just dig a hole, wack in some 100mm ag-pipe and then fill it up with nice chunky mulch.
Where possible a number of pits should be constructed around the garden. This enables you to rotate your greywater around and prevent the inevitable waterlogging that occurs if you leave your hose in one spot too long. For flat ground it’s great to create round pits, with each one midway between a few fruit trees. If on a slope, they will be on contour and can double as a swale.
The volume of each pit should be about 4 times the peak flow that leaves your house at any one time. For example if your washing machine pumps out 100 litres, the size of the hole needs to be 400litres (as a guide, 1m3 = 1,000litres). This is to allow for the space taken up by the woody mulch (about 2/3 of the volume) plus a bit extra. 40 cm is plenty deep enough, or else you’ll start to send most of the water down below the main feeder/drinker roots of your trees.
If you have very sandy soils in which most water just disappears straight down, it can pay to line the inside of your pit with plastic. A few punctured holes here and there allow you to infiltrate the water in the direction(s) of your choice. It also gives the critters more time to clean up the water.
With the huge increase in the use of greywater on Australian gardens, particularly here in Victoria where we’ve been on restrictions for a number of years now, there is concern about the effect it will have on soils in the long term. Even if using liquid detergents, which are much lower in sodium and phosphorus than powders (see lanfaxlabs for more info), the alkaline nature of soaps will affect soil pH. Fats and oils from our bodies can also clog up soil pores and make them hydrophobic and any bleaches or harsh cleaners will of course have a huge impact on soil life.
By filling these pits with chunky mulch, this acts to filter and clean the water, resulting in better quality irrigation for your valuable fruit trees. It’s not the mulch that does the filtering but rather the tiny soil critters that will colonise its surface and just like in a reedbed system, they greedily grab onto any nutrient that passes by. Inevitably, this mulch will be broken down into compost, at which time you should say “Awesome!” and fork it out of your pit straight onto the fruit trees beside. Then, give your local tree lopper a call and get a free/very cheap load of mulch delivered and refill them. (By the way, this is so much easier than cleaning out a clogged up reedbed, plus you get the compost out of it instead of a mess of aggregate you don’t know what to do with.)
The simplest way to get water to each pit is by extending the washing machine outlet hose. You can rotate this hose once a week or so. A few tips to prevent your washing machine’s engine from burning out: 1. Utilise gravity as much as possible; 2. Over 10m+, ensure the extension hose is at least 50mm to reduce strain on the pump; and 3. Don’t pump uphill (if you do need to, you’ll have to get a pump built for this purpose).
If you include an appropriate length of 100mm ag-pipe inside each pit, with one end just slightly sticking out, this means that you can poke your washing machine hose down inside so that the water infiltrates sub-surface as regulations rightly demand (stops kids and pets getting sick from the pretty nasty pathogens that greywater can contain).
If you want to utilise your bath and shower water also, by law you’re supposed to get a plumber in to divert the water. From here, a more permanent option is to construct branched drains which evenly distribute the water around the garden. Detailed design and installation instructions are available for this method in Art Ludwig’s book The New Create an Oasis Using Greywater.
You can irrigate a 1/8 acre suburban orchard for under $200, which is pretty good value I reckon compared to the $10,000-$20,000 approved treatment systems.
French Drains for Urban Storm-water Infiltration
Biological Cleaning, Conservation, Storm Water, Waste Water, Water Harvesting — by Campbell Wilson
When rainwater harvesting is mentioned, most people think of tanks straight away. That’s a great start, but there is a much bigger storage you have available to you on your land – the soil. (Check out Brad Lancaster’s fun U-tube video on this site, ‘The muffin tin and the sponge’ for a good intro)
So when your gutters flow and your tanks are full, don’t send all that valuable water straight the drain like so many do. Instead, have a go at utilising that water in your garden by creating a system similar to this.
Rural and semi-rural permaculture systems are often built with swales incorporated. A swale is a water harvesting ditch on contour which intercepts runoff, then fills up and holds onto the water long enough for it to soak into the soil for the use of tree crops (You can see plenty of examples of swales on this website).
Swales are fantastic, however, in an urban situation not everyone wants to have a garden that resembles a motor-cross track, nor gaping wide trenches that Granny can get lost in. The French-drain design explained in this article is an alternative, which has the same benefits of a swale, whilst being pretty much invisible.
Designing
Just as with swale systems, whenever we are infiltrating large amounts of water into our soil, it’s very important to include trees as part of the design; if not, you risk water logging and quite possibly salting the landscape.
Don’t just wack one of these in; you can put a whole series of them throughout your forest garden for example. When you’re deciding where they’ll go, it’s good to be aware that most fruit trees like to drink and eat at their dripline, so therefore this is where it makes sense to position your trenches. For young trees you’ll need to decide where the end dripline will be and position them there. It’ll take a while for the young tree’s roots to reach out to the moisture you’re infiltrating for them, so in the meantime, you can dig a finger off the side of your trench to direct water closer to it’s young root system.
Gravity is your best friend when playing with water, so start off by directing your downpipes or tank overflow to the top corner of your land through some 90mm PVC pipe (even if you think that your land is flat, there will always be some fall. If not, you’re either living in the middle of a salt-pan or an indoor basketball court). From here, work your way down the hill and position a trench wherever you have trees and shrubs that can utilise the moisture. Just make sure that you’re infiltrating water at least a few metres away from building foundations or else you can undermine them.
Size and shape
Each trench should be about 50 cm deep. Any more than that and you’ll be infiltrating the water below the main feeder and drinker roots of your fruit trees.
If your land is relatively flat, you can get quite creative and make them basically any shape you like. However, if you are on a slope, you’ll need to make sure that they are positioned across the slope, that is, on contour like a swale. Just remember, the bigger your trenches, the more water it can hold, and therefore, the more water it can infiltrate.
The construction is quite simple as the illustration shows:
90mm PVC pipe.
Begin with some 90mm PVC pipe heading from your water source with an open 90mm Tee pointing downwards at the centre of your trench. The top of this pipe should be about 10 cm below the surrounding soil level.
Reln drain.
Over the top of the PVC pipe you place an impervious reln drain with a gap of about 5 cm above the pipe (a reln drain is a corrugated half-pipe about 40cm in diameter and comes in 1.5m sections. They’re designed for use in septic tank leach fields and cost about AUD $15 at plumbing supply places). The reln drain should be well supported using old blocks or bricks to prevent it sinking over time, and to prevent pressure on the PVC pipe if it’s walked on.
Budgie wire
(the red line on the picture). This is placed over the base and ends of the reln drain and also at the opening of the tee. This is to prevent the mulch (which the trench is filled with) from floating up and entering the pipe.
Old plastic
(the yellow line on the picture). This is used to line the base of the trench, which encourages water to infiltrate laterally towards the trees’ main drinker roots, rather than straight down.
Mulch. The trench should be filled with either coarse mulch or aggregate. The purpose of the reln drain is to create an air gap around the pipe, which stops tree roots from clogging it up (see the front view below). If you decide on mulch to fill your trench, it will need to be topped up from time to time, but will eventually become a lovely big humus sponge. If you decide on aggregate, you’ll need to line your trench with Geo-textile matting to stop tree roots and soil from clogging it up.
So basically, what happens is the water flows along the pipe until it comes to your open tee where it has no choice but to pour out into your trench.
Once the trench fills up to the height of the tee, the water will then continue along the pipe until it gets to your next trench which it will dutifully fill etc etc.
On urban properties, a lot of water can run off all those hard surfaces during a wetter period or during a large rain event (A note to Victorians: They will come again one day, I promise), far more than our gardens can infiltrate. So it’s really important to be mindful about the possibility of flooding your neighbour’s or even your own house.
To avoid this problem (quite possibly very costly), once you’ve caught and infiltrated all the water you can/need, you’ll need to divert it back into the stormwater drains before it rushes onto buddy-next-door’s place (by law in Oz, you’ll need a plumber or landscaper to do this job, but before you do, have a chat with your neighbour cause he might like to use the runoff himself).
Similarly, there will be times when your soil is already as wet as it needs to be and if you send in much more, you’ll just end up making your soils anaerobic and you’ll also leach valuable nutrients from your system. To avoid this, plumb your system so that during these wetter times you can just send the water down the drain.
Good luck and happy drought-proofing!
Cam Wilson, www.forestedgepermaculture.com
For methods of collecting water from dew, such as air wells and dew pods, see
http://www.rexresearch.com/airwells/airwells.htm
Making the Most of the ‘Ultimate Health Food Shop’ – Your Garden
http://permaculture.org.au/2009/03/17/making-the-most-of-the-ultimate-health-food-shop-your-garden/
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